


both hands now

by ninzied



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Shower Sex, ksw: thirsty thursday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-01 20:41:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20264203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninzied/pseuds/ninzied
Summary: outtakes from an elevator.





	both hands now

**Author's Note:**

> for kastle smut week: in an elevator/enclosed space.

He breathes into her slowly, and she feels his shoulder rise and fall with the movement, stilted but steady. In, out. In, out. His forehead is slick where it rests against hers. She doesn't know if it's her blood or his, or if maybe the blast had—

But she can't think about that right now.

Karen squeezes her eyes shut, as if that could make everything else disappear – everything but what she can feel, Frank's arm in her hand, the way their bodies are anchored together.

He has to get out before it's too late.

"Frank." It's whispered, and she's not sure that he hears her at first. "Frank. You have to go."

He blinks at her, eyes dark without any understanding behind them. They're skirting over her face, down her body and back again, seeming to catalogue nothing but blood and places where she might have been injured. He sways closer, brow furrowed, and she realizes then. He doesn't know how to leave her like this.

"It's okay," she tells him. "I'm okay."

She's definitely not okay.

Her ears are still ringing, and there are things the bomb has shaken up inside of her that she hasn't even registered yet – things that will visit her later that night, when she's tossing and turning and trying to sleep.

But for now, all she can let herself think about is Frank. Getting him out of here. Keeping him safe.

She nudges him back, just a little. Enough, she hopes, for him to get the idea.

"Look at me, Frank."

He does, then, and the expression on his face almost knocks the wind out of her. She doesn't know if she's ever seen him look this broken and exposed, like he has just enough strength to keep from collapsing in front of her.

Karen touches a hand to his cheek, leans in, and kisses him.

It's soft, and over before either of them seem to understand what just happened. Frank's breathing has changed – it's heavier now, but his eyes are bright when he looks up at her, some of that bleakness faded away, and it's something.

It's enough, for now.

His gaze travels back down to her mouth, a different kind of searching this time. Heat touches up her spine, light-fingered and dizzying, as he steps away from her and nods.

She wants to think she knows what it means.

_I'll come for you. I'll come for you._

And then Frank's heaving himself through the ceiling, with a pained grunt that echoes inside of her head for long moments after he's gone. He's going to be fine – he has to be, there's no other way she can think of this ending – but it hurts all the same, that he has to do this part alone.

It's dark out by the time Karen makes it back to her apartment.

Between Homeland and Sergeant Mahoney, whatever energy she had left is completely tapped out, and she moves slowly as if wading through water, up the stairs and then through her door after fumbling some for the keys. One of them had snagged in the bullet hole at the bottom of her bag, which rips open wider when she finally unearths them.

She takes note of the fact that her window's propped open, but still she doesn't let herself believe it until she's halfway to the bathroom and sees the light streaming out of the doorway.

She lets out the breath she'd been holding, and realizes then that a large part of her still hadn't been sure she would ever see him again.

"Frank," she says, so much relief pouring out that she has to grip the door frame for a moment as she gazes over at him.

He's hunched down on the lid of her toilet, hands folded together over his knees. There's a piece of shrapnel in her sink, and what looks like the remains of a sleeve now wrapped tight around the wound in his bare arm. The rest of his shirt is in a similar state, tattered with swaths of blood-slickened skin peeking through. The tiles on the floor are stained, the rusted brown color letting her know how long it's been since he got here. Since he's been waiting for her.

Strange, to count the passage of time in the way that blood dries.

"Been here a while," says Frank, as if reading the thoughts cross her face. The words are rough-edged, probably still coated with their own kind of blood.

"They had a lot of questions," she tells him.

Frank lets out a humorless chuckle. "Yeah. Sounds about right."

He falls silent, tilting his head an almost infinitesimal degree at her. There's an uncertainty in his expression that she's not accustomed to – like he isn't sure he should've have come here, like he's about to find out that he made a mistake.

He doesn't say any of this out loud, but she shakes her head anyway, and moves across the small space over to him.

Karen's never been _afraid_ to touch him, not that. Hesitant, maybe. Careful, most certainly yes. She's taken most of her cues from the distance he's always kept from her, though she's slipped up on occasion, and seen the way it throws him each time. Eyes on alert watching her cross over that line in the hospital room. The startled way he stepped back when she first reached out and hugged him.

This time doesn't prove any different, even though he knows it's coming – even though he might've been waiting for this, too. He follows the path of her hand with a cautious gaze, like he's not sure what this touch of hers might do to him.

It's almost laughable, considering what his own hands are capable of, and she wants to kiss him right then and there, but doesn't.

She cards her fingers through his hair, finding a gash in his temple that hasn't quite stopped bleeding. Frank winces only a little, then briefly closes his eyes when she traces her thumb down the side of his cheek; and that gesture too, the implicit trust in her that it holds, makes her chest ache even harder for him.

"What'd you tell them?" His voice has, if possible, only gotten lower.

Karen gives him a half-smile. "That I'm just as much of a terrorist as you are."

His mouth goes lopsided too. "Bet they liked that."

Their knees bump together when she takes a step closer. His hand reaches out, she thinks at first only to steady her, but then it lingers there, gently cupping the back of her thigh through her skirt. Her fingers trail lower, down to the neckline of his sweater.

"I told Brett you were looking out for me."

Frank clears his throat, rocking forward a little. "I did what I had to."

"I know." She tugs lightly, pointedly, on his sweater, and he sways gingerly onto his feet. Still so careful around her, even now when they're both barely holding it together. "But don't you think it's time someone did the same for you, Frank?"

"You know I can't – I can't ask you to do that, Karen," but he breaks off when he sees her smile, stepping away from him for a moment to lean over the bathtub.

"It was kind of a rhetorical question." She turns the tap on, looking over her shoulder at him. "Take off your clothes."

She thinks he might protest, but then he reaches wordlessly for his hemline, lifting it up one-handed. He's made it about halfway when she returns to him, and she eases the rest of it over his head and shoulder, letting it drop in a wet heap on the floor.

Something twinges in her back with the motion, and he catches her flinch, gaze suddenly alert again as he steps in and says, "Let me see."

She's too distracted to argue with him – and besides that it only seems fair, she's already asked him to do the same – and she reaches for her top button, only half-aware of what her hands are doing. His torso is bare, and she doesn't know where she's supposed to be looking; he's all muscle, lean, sculpted lines of it, but he's also all blood. There's blood everywhere.

The next button quivers a bit in her grip, slipping from what she realizes is blood from his shirt. She wants to touch him, but she doesn't know where it's safe to put her hands. He's all blood, and so is she, her fingers are covered in it and it doesn't feel right to be self-indulgent right now.

He's been holding himself very still, but then he sees her falter, and he moves in the rest of the way, replacing her hands with his.

"This okay?" he rasps out.

She nods, watching his fingers work deftly through the rest of the buttons. He's careful but efficient, and he's steady despite the new, shallow edge to his breathing, stuttering warmth over her skin. Her shirt had come loose from her skirt, and when he reaches the end he pauses, glancing up at her with another question in his eyes.

"This isn't the way I'd pictured this ever happening." She doesn't mean to say it out loud, and she wonders too late if she's exposed too much of herself when she does.

But then Frank replies, simply, "Me either."

He peels back the edges of her shirt, fingers ghosting over the bare skin of her stomach. She sucks in a breath, and reaches for the hem of his pants, undoing the button and grasping the zipper, pulling slowly down.

She pauses to let him pull her shirt back from her shoulders, freeing her arms before slipping his jeans down past his hip bones. He kicks off the rest, stepping out of them once they're pooled on the floor, and then he's nudging closer, finding the zipper along the side of her skirt.

He has a palm on the other side of her waist, bracing there as he works her zipper down. Her skirt joins the rest of their clothes seconds later, and they both go still again, hands back to hovering, like they know where to go but aren't quite sure how to get there from this.

His eyes are everywhere, all at once. She feels them like a caress on her skin, the tenderness of it making her forget for a moment that she's covered in blood and standing half-naked in front of him.

Karen senses that he wants to touch her just as badly, but won't, not like this, and so she's the first to move again, taking his hand and coaxing him over to the bathtub with her. She steps into the shower, bra and all, and after a split second of waiting he follows in his boxer briefs, crowding her into the warm spray of the water.

She watches it cloud over in red at their feet. Her breath hitches, something trying to crack open in her chest at the sight. Relief, she thinks, but it aches in a way she hadn't expected.

"Hey." His voice is a low rumble. "Turn around."

She faces the water, closing her eyes as it sluices down the front of her body. Frank's gathering her hair over one shoulder, his hand skimming down her back in search of any serious injuries.

"Couple of bruises," he surmises at last. His touch lingers over the curve of her spine, and she arches into it, turning to glance back at him. "Nothing that won't heal."

"Guess that makes it your turn." She angles to face him again, trying not to think about how her wet her underthings are, how little they've left to the imagination. Frank's hand slides down to rest over her waist, and he stares at it for a moment like maybe it doesn't belong to him, finger twitching slightly into her skin.

He clears his throat, eyes dragging back up her body to settle onto her face, dark-gazed and entreating. Like it's the safest place he knows he can put them right now.

"Come here," she says, holding her hand out to him.

He shuffles a step closer, letting her walk him into the water with her. His eyes close when it hits, and a shudder wracks through him as Karen takes his face into her hands.

"We're okay," she says. "We're okay."

He's still as she tilts his chin to one side, the water forming pink-tinged rivulets down the length of his neck. She reaches past the shower curtain, retrieving a washcloth to dab at his cut, rinsing away as much of the blood as she can.

"Sorry," she says when she catches him grimace, but he gives the slightest shake of his head, squeezing her hip in a sign of assurance.

She slowly works her way lower, down his shoulders to his chest, the arm that the shrapnel had hit. Carefully, she undoes his makeshift bandage and sets it aside, perusing the skin underneath before drawing him further into the water, cleaning the rest of his arm as she goes.

They wind up under the spray with both his hands around her, and when Karen looks up he's closer than she'd realized, her chest pressed up to his. She touches his face with her free hand, and he leans into it, lips grazing her palm with a soft, stuttering exhale.

He snakes an arm up her back, and she moves her body just flush with his, eyes fluttering shut when she feels his fingers in her hair. His thumb brushes over her forehead – rubbing away the blood there, she thinks, and she's strangely soothed by the gesture – before settling his hand over the nape of her neck.

Their foreheads touch.

She doesn't know who leans in first. But Frank's mouth is on hers the next instant, soft and warm and searching, and it breaks a dam inside of her, the need to be delicate melting away. Suddenly she can't keep her hands from being everywhere at once, threading through his hair, rubbing over his chest, gripping onto his shoulders just to hold on as he hauls her against him.

They kiss for long moments, mouths slanting and moving together, bodies intertwined. He does something with his tongue, stroking and laving in a way that sends liquid heat straight down to her core, a moan slipping out that only makes him kiss her harder.

It's heady and desperate, and all she can think is how close they had come to not having this, setting fires everywhere that they touch as they kiss each other breathless in the water.

Frank spins her sideways, pressing her up to the wall and pinning her there with a well-placed thigh. He's hard against her leg, straining through his boxer briefs, and she bites her lip with enough force to draw blood. The friction is exquisite, and he's not unaffected either when she grinds herself down on him, feeling his groan like a jolt throughout her entire body.

"God, Frank," she sighs as he mouths wet, tongue-filled kisses down the side of her throat. "I want—" She pushes up against him, not ashamed in the slightest, and he seems to take it as an invitation, sliding a hand up her spine to her bra and deftly unclasping the back.

He wastes no time setting his mouth to a nipple, sucking in hard as she scrambles to free the straps from her shoulders. Her arms come around the back of his head, and she revels in the feel of him moving beneath her hands, biting and tonguing her breast as he grabs up a palmful of the other and squeezes there, too.

She's slick between her thighs and aching, need pressing sharp in her chest until she might lose her breath from it. Frank's not faring any better, she can tell; his movements are growing erratic, the breath fairly shaking out of him as he stands and positions himself closer.

She reaches for his underwear first, shucking them quickly while he takes his time with hers, tracing one lacy edge with a finger before dipping it briefly inside. He lets out a soft groan, hips jerking a little when she wraps a hand around him. He's thick and hard, and velvety-smooth as she works him up and down, her vision going hazy when he's equally attentive to her clit.

"Karen," he says, her name coming out ragged.

He kisses her again, gripping her thigh and lifting it waist-level as he braces his other arm to the patch of wall beside her. But she doesn't miss the way his elbow buckles slightly under his own weight, and switching arms doesn't seem to quite cut it either, not with the way he wants to be holding her.

"Hey," says Karen, pulling away just enough to dot a kiss to his nose. "I'm pretty sure shower sex only works in the movies anyway."

"Mm." He grunts in frustration. "May have to take you up on the challenge some other time. Want to use both hands on you."

"I want that too." She runs a fingertip over a vein in his dick, feeling him twitch against her palm. He shifts, pumping himself slowly in and out of her grasp. "But one will do just fine for now."

She wants to take her time with him – that's all she's ever wanted with Frank, is more time – but the water's growing lukewarm now, and she's more than ready for them to entertain other ways of making each other come apart.

With a renewed sense of purpose, Frank dips down to sample the curve of her throat, slipping a finger back inside her as he goes. The sensation is nearly too much, coming from all over, but it's so, so good, and then he adds another, thumb pressing circles into her clit. She almost forgets she's supposed to be returning the favor, canting her hips to chase after that blissful building of pressure from his touch.

It's clumsy, and rushed, and her bathtub suddenly seems nowhere near big enough for this kind of pleasure. But when Frank brings his mouth back to hers, kissing her soundly between gasps for air, she's never felt more alive.

He breaks off on another groan, curling his fingers into her at a different angle, his thumb finding another spot too that makes her blink and see stars. The heat begins to unfurl deep inside, wave after wave of an exquisite intensity, until she's crying out and coming hard on his hand.

Through the aftershocks of her pleasure she's vaguely aware of his other hand wrapping around hers, sliding them over his dick together in short, quick bursts, and fuck that's – God, that's—

She rides out the rest of her orgasm, with Frank following soon thereafter. Warmth seeps through their joined hands as he half-collapses into her, breathing heavily into her shoulder. Their bodies go still as they take their time to recover, lulled by the sounds of the water, like rain against a windowpane.

Karen wraps her arm around him and turns, grazing a kiss to his forehead. He nuzzles her throat in response, lips dragging over her pulse point as it slowly returns to something more normal.

Carefully, without moving him around too much, Karen stretches her foot towards the tap, nudging it off with a toe. The water peters out, but they go on standing there for a while, stealing a kiss here and there, until she gives an involuntary shiver.

Frank straightens, nudging one last kiss to her temple before leaning out to grab up a couple of towels.

"Let's get you warmed up."

"Let's get you _stitched_ up," she corrects him, smiling when he wraps the first towel around her.

It registers in a completely different way now, that he's standing naked in her bathtub. All she can do is bite her lip to keep from blushing as he throws her a soft little smirk, slinging the other towel low on his hips. "You feeling doctorly?"

"Washing it out is always the first step, right?" She moves to the bath mat, still a little jelly-legged, but Frank's right behind her to keep her from falling.

"Yeah, I've definitely skipped that part before." He chuckles when she taps her hip into his in admonishment, catching her against him one-handed.

"Not anymore, you don't."

"Not anymore," he murmurs, low like a vow, and she doesn't know if she can let herself believe it quite yet, but she'll take it for now, and hope for less broken days to come.

"Sit," says Karen, fetching her aid kits.

He does as ordered, holding still save for that ever-steady gaze on her as she gets to work. But if his hand eventually finds itself wandering, and her towel comes slightly undone as she's stitching up the last of his wounds, well. She can pay him back for that, with both hands, much later.


End file.
